History
SEAC's Founding
The first seeds of SEAC (pronounced 'seek') were planted in the fall of 1988 after a group of students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill placed an ad in Greenpeace magazine inviting other students to join them in the fight to save the planet. The enthusiastic response to that ad emboldened the Chapel Hill group, and in early 1989 they set about to organize Threshold, SEAC's first national student environmental conference.Many people, though, said we were aiming too high. The critics said we couldn't possibly do something so big. However, we persevered and worked even harder. We believed there could be nothing more important that we could possibly do. Through untiring commitment, good luck, and the power of an idea whose time had come, we succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.
On October 27-29, 1989, more than 1700 students from 43 states and over 225 schools came to Chapel Hill to participate in Threshold. It was an astounding turnout. On the first night, the jam packed Memorial Hall auditorium buzzed with excitement for SEAC had come to life and with it a new national student environmental movement was born. The conference had given SEAC the launch pad it needed to become a national organization. On that weekend many student environmentalists from around the nation also met each other for the very first time, talked grassroots organizing strategy, and voted for SEAC's first national campaign: an all out effort to save America's remaining old-growth forests and to reform the U.S. Forest Service.
Threshold sparked tremendous energy. Just two weeks afterward, students at 50 schools coordinated a nationwide day of action demanding that our universities and schools become models of environmental sustainability. Three months after the conference, students across the country organized marches on their state capitols calling on our politicians to immediately adopt policies which would conserve, preserve and restore our national forest heritage. Five months later, students from across the nation descended on our nation's capitol to participate in a SEAC rally calling for strong national clean air laws.
When we came together for Catalyst in Champaign, Illinois (SEAC's second national environmental conference held just one year after Threshold) more than 7,000 students from all 50 states and eleven countries were there to celebrate and take SEAC into the environmental decade of the 1990s.
By Jimmy Langman, Threshold chairperson.
SEAC's History
Numerous regions began corporate accountability campaigns around issues like British Petroleum's pollution in Ohio and Coors' destruction of rivers in Colorado. The momentum of Catalyst also carried into regional and state gatherings around the country. SEAC developed a national magazine, Threshold, which we still produce today. Then in January of 1991 the US went to war with Iraq. Many SEACers organized against the war and SEAC launched an Energy Independence Campaign to coincide with the anti-war effort and its corporate accountability campaign. Unfortunately, only a hundred people attended the main event, a rally in DC.
In the summer of 1991 SEAC held its 2nd National Council Meeting. At that meeting, the organization decided to no longer hold national campaigns and launched two new projects, the Common Ground conference (2500 attended it in Boulder Colorado), and the Action for Solidarity, Equality, Environment and Development (A SEED) an international effort of several youth organizations to impact the Earth Summit in Rio. Also SEAC started a field-organizing program, sending out student organizers to visit schools spreading the SEAC message.
A SEED grew into SEAC's largest single project. There was a speaker's tour with educational events at over 120 campuses. There was a weekend of conferences in three states and 23 countries networked by email and fax to discuss the issues. In March 1992, SEAC organized a series of demonstrations at the United Nations in New York. In June, one of the three official observers on the U.S. Delegation to the Rio Earth Summit, and the only student, was a SEACer. In Rio, A SEED organized more actions, and students on 4 continents, including SEACers in the US, went on a hunger strike. In the end, SEAC became part of network of student groups in 62 countries struggling at the grassroots for environmental and social justice.
During our peak in 1991-92, SEAC had 13 people on its full-time staff: five in the national office; five working on A SEED and three field organizers. In 1992, SEAC's budget fell rapidly and the staff was cut to five people. At the July National Council meeting, the People of Color Caucus (POCC) demanded and received equal representation on the National Council. During the fall, the SEAC office continued SEAC's new strategy of focusing on supporting the development of local coalitions. The office was moved to a larger space in Chapel Hill, and the administrative capacity was increased.
In 1993, indicative of SEAC's early commitment to the struggle against corporate sponsored globalization we started to organize against NAFTA. SEAC also created a weekend Training Program in the summer where we sent teams of trainers to schools for a weekend of skills and issue workshops. That fall, SEAC joined the Free Burma movement to promote human rights and environmental justice in Burma. In 1994, SEAC launched its Environmental Justice Initiative (EJI) as part of our commitment to expanding the analysis of students and youth beyond traditional environmental issues. The EJI was a project of the POCC and was geared toward educating and empowering youth and high school students. Part of EJI eventually turned into Youth United for Community Action and became its own organization in 1996. The POCC started developing an Environmental Justice Organizing Guide (EJOG) which was completed in 1996.
It hasn't always been easy - and we're going to be honest about it. While SEAC initially went through a phase of incredible growth, from early on the organization has had to deal with high turnover and highly fluctuating funding (due to the nature of foundation funding). For the first phase of its history, SEAC was able to maintain a national office with between five and thirteen staff members. Unfortunatelyin the summer of 1996, a decision that was made due to a lack of information caused a lot of problems for SEAC. Its Coordinating Committee decided to cut a program that held activist training sessions at different schools. Their primary intent was to save money, but they did not know that some of the organization's future income (foundation grants) was tied to it. Ultimately SEAC lost all of its staff, almost all its funding, closed the national office, and reduced the size and frequency of Threshold, its magazine.
However, with the help of courageous volunteers, SEAC has rebuilt! We opened a new office in 1998, moving from Chapel Hill to Philadelphia. We currently have five staff members working on fundraising, membership, outreach, national council development, and coordinating our speaker's bureau. In the past four years, as SEAC has been able to increase the size of its office staff, we've developed our capacity where we're ready to see and aid in a rebirth of the student environmental / environmental justice movement. We've revamped our materials (organizing guides, fact-sheets, etc) in our information Clearinghouse. Our stability is assured as we are developing our National Council to take greater responsibility for running our organization - and becoming less reliant on our National Office staff. Also we are no longer reliant on foundations awarding us grants, as the overwhelming majority of our income comes from the grassroots (memberships, donations, merchandise sales, and SEAC speakers).
In recent years SEACers have helped pressure Home Depot (and other retailers) to commit to stop selling old-growth wood, participated in shutting down the IMF/World Bank on April 16 2000 in DC, and that summer launched a National Campaign to get Dioxins out of Tampons!
During over ten years of SEAC history, SEAC has helped network student environmentalists, broadening and radicalizing individual's perspectives to tackle the root causes of environmental injustice, launched national/regional/state campaigns (some notable ones include Mt. Graham, James Bay, NAFTA), and trained hundreds/thousands of life-long activists who have gone on to serve in organizations like Buckeye Forest Council, Allegheny Defense Project, Missouri Heartwood, Indiana Forest Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, Project Underground, Corporate Watch and many others.
Another example of an ongong successful SEAC program was field organizing which began in 1992. Cris Moore spent a few months in New York. Mike Trapp was the most awesome seac field organizer, spent maybe three years, never with a car mostly in the midwest and Ohio, although he also made one trip to the northeast. That was 1993-1995. His work spurned Ozark Summer '94 and a successful anti-university incinerator campaign in St. Louis, and it really brought together the midwest. Sarah Bantz did field organizing from 1995 to 1996, in Arkansas organizing against chip mills, and also in Iowa and Missouri. Amanda Bahnson field organized around the Midwest from 1997-1998. Keegan Cox has been doing outreach in New York for the past couple years. SEAC field organizers have done a couple hundred presentations regarding issues, skills, and spreading the SEAC message!
